This year's Performance Gallery entry in the Fringe Fest, scripted by Brad Cupples and directed by Darryl Harris, chooses to stick to a more familiar format (the extended comedy sketch) than previous year's creative and passionate efforts. The bits that work here are usually the ones that are the most outlandish.

Art Academy: June 2, 4, 6, 8 and 12

At a time when the national political
scene has pundits turning blue and budgets running red, the Performance Gallery veterans have wittily and willfully transformed themselves into
the rogues gallery that makes up a city council.

Know Theatre: June 3, 4, 6, 9 and 11

Back in the 1970s disaster flicks such as 'Earthquake' touted ridiculous gimmicks like Sensurround, which simply pimped out the theater with big speakers to shake the audience silly. That's where the folks at Fake Bacon went for the premise of their show.

Duveneck 3: June 3, 4, 6, 12 and 16

The power and truth of dreams leads a young woman from confusion to understanding in this multi-disciplinary new work. Playwright Serenity Fisher and director Caitlin Kane present a
dreamscape of personal metaphors and iconic issues through poetry, music and storytelling.

Let's get it out of the way right now: 'The Success Show' succeeds. But then, staging a send-up of a business motivational seminar offers a wealth of material to choose from, and writer/director Michael Comstock does an 80/20 job of making it pay off.

This performance poem, written and delivered by regional bard Richard Hague and supported solidly by Michael Henson on guitar is, even by Fringe standards, a bare-bones affair. And that is as it should be. The two men take the small stage at the Coffee Emporium and, for 75 minutes, trade off in verse and song, evoking what it means to be a man devoted deeply to drink.

This 80-minute riff on an actual dinner engagement between the cigar-wielding Groucho Marx and the modernist poet T.S. Eliot deserves credit for its promising concept and daunting display of cultural erudition. But it falls short of its intriguing premise.

The program establishes that the cast has developed a series of segments exploring the myth of being a young American in the present century. What's offered are stories you would expect from a collective of attractive college-age performers: the deaths of grandparents, the breakup of young-love relationships, acknowledgment of a parent’s wisdom, being made to look foolish in middle school.

Literary legend tells of an evening in June 1964 when Groucho Marx dined at the home of poet T.S. Eliot. The pairing seems unlikely, unless you consider that both men were famous for keeping their fans and followers guessing after the secret word.